Fu Tu re

3: Second Mornings

Forti fled calmly. As she walked to the single, unguarded door, the bouncer nowhere in sight, she noticed there were many groups of people similar in age. They hung around like they finished club activities or sports practice. A few were more buzzed, like they came out from a concert. One boy extended his arms, hands wide open, and hung his head. Then he shook his body vigorously as if shot with an electric current and playfully shrieked. His buddies cackled at the crude imitation, slapping their knees, wheezing, folding in on themselves.

Although Forti flung the door open, it closed quietly behind her. She weaved between silhouettes of people through the dark hallway, heading towards the light at the end. Back in the lobby, she jogged out like she had an errand to fulfill, because the longer she stayed, the more she felt her humanity decaying.

Sitting in a subway train, Forti finally registered the freezing pain nipping at her ears and fingers. A raw, scratchy soreness had settled in her throat, and her eyes stung dry, all because she ran breathlessly through the incoming winter winds, unable to remember much about her run other than the desperate urgency to flee. Although indoors, she sluggishly pulled out her scarf and wrapped it around, comforted by the punctual warmth it emitted. Digging further into her bag, she pulled out her phone. She checked the location tracker app, turning it off, and then the time. 17:21. She was cutting it close, but she'll make it. She texted her mom she was coming home.

It was plain city etiquette to not look at anyone in a train.

An unspoken rule.

People kept to themselves, unless with companions, and on this train, everyone was alone. Heads were tucked down, fixed at the floor or at screens. Some had their eyes closed or glazed over. But Forti was too drowsy to heed the social bylaw and grazed her eyes over the passengers.

She was lucid enough to not blatantly stare, but the day had drained her efforts to be subtle. She eyed a man with headphones, bobbing to unknown music and wearing blazing black and red. Across and slightly away from him was another man, older and garbed in an overcoat and trilby hat. There was a woman in a fashionable puffer jacket, standing by a set of doors, looking out the windows and entertained by the stream of art and glowing graffiti on the subway walls. A neutral or maybe another man was napping with crossed arms, their chin resting on their chest. The face of the suearis on the cross flashed across Forti's mind.

Scrunching her eyes tightly, she tried to erase him, and continued people-watching. A neutral held their phone sideways, and the frantic press of their thumbs implied they were playing a game. They didn't seem like they were having fun. Nearby was a woman slouched on a bench with legs splayed open, scrolling on her phone and unhindered by her long nails. The man on the cross's scream echoed in Forti's skull. She shook her head harshly, as if to throw the clinging memory out of her.

Not a single person, no matter how interesting or outlandish they appeared, could keep her thoughts at bay, could keep the man on the cross away. He was staked in her heart.

It didn't help that all of the people in the train looked like they could've been in that cave, and in a colorful city like Solpolis, it was disconcerting to realize she was in a car with only humans. Forti defeatedly looked down at the floor, seeing her shoes, waiting to succumb to her secret agony.

But the ventilation hummed. The train swayed and purred. The man on the cross didn't return on his own, so Forti contemplated on her present respite, soothed by the rumbling lullaby of the train car.

Everyone seemed peaceful, within a mortal limbo. They moved without moving and lived as if sleeping. The longer she was in the subway, the farther she was from the chains of the suearis, and she felt her moral responsibility wane.